2. Paranormal Activity
The modern Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity was made for peanuts and went on to become one of the most profitable movies of all time. A simple ghost story told through the genre favourite technique of found footage, it was mildly horrifying, but the pre-release hype of it being the scariest movie of all time, fuelled by the anecdote that Stephen Spielberg was gibbering by the end, turned out to be bogus. But the hype did its job; it took a film no one would have seen and made it a sensation. And then, in a similar move to what happened with Saw, the sequels came quick and fast. Because the idea is so simple and requires little in the way of cinematography or special effects (and, if youre being facetious, writing), these instalments can be released quickly at little cost. And thus it was we now have a new instalment in this series each October. The problem is, a film made quickly and cheap is never a good idea; the first Paranormal Activity was in production for a long time and the reason theres few breakouts from the sub-million dollar budget club is because they are normally terrible. Which why there is no surprise in the sequels being unscary messes. If youre a fan of horror, then its fresher to see a new idea, rather than cheap copy of a once good one.